A whopping sunspot that is getting larger and crackling with activity threatens to flash powerful solar flares in our planet's direction.
The sunspot, named AR3780, appears to be getting bigger and bigger as it travels across the sun, marking another of the many sunspots that have been spotted during a 23-year-high for sunspot frequency.
Currently on the southeastern side of our star, the sunspot will soon be on the side of the sun facing toward us. This will allow us to measure its size more accurately but will also put us in the firing line for solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
Sunspots are dark areas on the sun's surface caused by intense magnetic activity. They often appear in groups and can be several times larger than Earth. The intense magnetic fields in and around sunspots can become twisted and stressed, and when these magnetic field lines reconnect—in a process called magnetic reconnection—they release vast amounts of energy, resulting in a solar flare. This process may also fling out huge plumes of solar plasma in the form of a CME.
Solar flares can cause radio blackouts, damage satellites and affect GPS signals, while CMEs can trigger geomagnetic storms, which can result in auroras and widespread power outages.
More powerful CMEs and solar flares cause more extreme effects on the planet. The G5 geomagnetic storm—the most severe form of the storm—seen on May 10 resulted in the northern lights being visible across all 50 U.S. states. This storm was the most powerful that we have seen since 2003, coming as the sun approaches its solar maximum.
David Jess, a solar physics professor at Northern Ireland's Queen's University Belfast, previously told Newsweek, "G5 storms are very uncommon. We might expect only three to four of these events over the duration of a solar cycle, which lasts 11 years. Interestingly, we didn't have any G5 storms over the last solar cycle."
The solar maximum is a phase in the sun's approximately 11-year solar cycle, during which it experiences the highest frequency of sunspots, solar flares and other solar activities. The next solar maximum is expected to occur between late 2024 and early 2026.
"The sun has been having bursts of activity typical of being near solar maximum and likely to last for a year or two until it generally goes down when there are less sunspots," Martin Connors, a professor of space science and physics at Canada's Athabasca University, told Newsweek.
This is why the sun is experiencing a 23-year-high of sunspot numbers, with 196.5 being the average number for last month. This is the highest seen since 2001.
The 2001 sunspot peak came only a few years before the famous 2003 Halloween storms, when an X45 solar flare and G5 geomagnetic storms were recorded and power outages occurred in Sweden.
With the current approach to the solar maximum, other strange solar phenomena are occurring, including something called "sympathetic solar flares." This is when two separate sunspots send out solar flares at the same time.
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